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A group of demonstrators yesterday gatecrashed The Banker's Innovation in Investment Banking awards ceremony at The Sheraton on Park Lane and presented Barclays with a fake award for 'Innovation in Interest Rate Manipulation'.

The Intruders, a loose group of friends that includes former Oxford University students, first gained notoriety a week ago when they gatecrashed a private tax conference dinner at Oxford University. They presented former head of Her Majesty’s Revenues and Customs, Dave Hartnett, with an award for corporate tax avoidance http://bit.ly/RPwaga. Video footage of the hoax went viral.

Stephen Reid, a former student at Wadham College, Oxford University, and a member of The Intruders, told Financial News today how the group managed to gain access to The Banker Awards, present Barclays with a fake award and then make their getaway.

Reid, who now works at think tank New Economics Foundation, said: “We did a mad ring-around to see who was up for it, found a group of people, went out and bought a bottle of champagne, put our suits on and just did it basically.”

Barclays declined to comment.

Philip Alexander, senor editor at The Banker, said that nobody was particularly upset by the outburst and everybody took it in good humour.

Sarah Whitham, The Sheraton's PR manager, said that security staff were alerted to the intruders and removed them. "Hotel management took all precautions necessary and there was no disruption to other hotel guests. The safety and security of our guests and associates is our paramount priority," she said.

The Intruders walked straight into the hotel. When a receptionist asked if they were there for the awards, they replied in the affirmative and made their way down into the ballroom. They arrived as the awards ceremony was starting and after about seven awards had been presented the group walked up onto the stage. Two of the group delivered a speech and others filmed the event using video cameras.

One of the speech givers said: “Sorry to interrupt, ladies and gentlemen. We’ve got an unscheduled award now. This is the award for Innovation in Interest Rate Manipulation. The prize is of course a bottle of Bollinger champagne. In a competitive field, with many of you making hundreds of millions of pounds rigging Libor, the winner is Barclays.”

The bottle of Bollinger was a reference to evidence from the Financial Services Authority investigation into Barclays’ manipulation of submissions for the London Interbank Offered Rate. A Barclays trader was asked by another banker to artificially lower the bank’s Libor submission and subsequently invited him over to “open a bottle of Bollinger”.

Reid said: “We then asked for a round of applause and the hilarious thing is that a good number of people in the hall actually clapped.”

Nobody from Barclays came to collect the prize.

• The escape

The group was ushered into the lobby of the ballroom where, according to Reid, “it all got pretty heated”. He said that security guards "were trying to hold people down and stop people getting away". He added: "The main thing was getting the footage out. I had one camera, grabbed another and ran out.”

Two other members, who were apparently locked in a room, managed to escape through an open fire escape in the corner of the room.

Another member of the group was wedged in the hotel's main revolving door with two people pinning him against the glass door, according to Reid. Eventually, he was let go. Reid said: “We got out with everything, the only thing left behind was the box for the champagne.”

Reid added that one of the objectives of The Intruders is to show bankers that they are part of the same society and that culture in the investment banking industry is wrong. He said: “It’s unbelievable that these people seem totally untouched and still go on holding awards ceremonies in Mayfair. These people think they’re above the real economy and ordinary people.”

The Intruders said in a separate email: “The wealthy elite believe they are unaccountable, that they are free from the consequences of the crisis they created. They are wrong. The Intruders are here to crash the party and expose the excess and hubris of the people that got us into this mess.”